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Problems of Peace and 
After-Peace 

Nicholas Murray Butler 



An Address delivered at the Lincoln Day Banquet 

under the auspices of the Republican County 

Committee of Passaic County, New Jersey 

Paterson, N. J., February ii, 1919 



Problems of Peace and After-Peace 

By Nicholas Murray Butler 

After expressing his high appreciation of the compli- 
ment paid him by the RepubHcans of Passaic County, in 
inviting him to speak in the city where he had grown up 
and first taken active part in poHtics, Mr. Butler gave 
some personal reminiscences of the political leaders and 
political controversies of the years between 1883 and 
1892 when he himself was very active in the Republican 
Organization of Passaic County. Mr. Butler continued: 
It is fitting that Republicans throughout the nation 
should mark their loyal celebration of the anniversary of 
Lincoln's birth by invoking his spirit, his statesmanship, 
and his lofty patriotism, to guide the Republican Party 
in its relation toward the grave questions, both national 
and international, that are pressing for answer. The duty 
and the opportunity of the Republican Party are of 
supreme importance, and the party is called upon again, 
as it was in i860 and in 1896, to bend all its energies and 
to unite all its abilities in solving problems which involve 
the very fabric and honor of the Government. It must 
not be forgotten that the Congressional elections of 1918 
indicated with clear emphasis that a large plurality of 
American voters place their confidence and their hope 
in the policies and in the leadership of the Republican 
Party. Indeed, a change of but a few hundred votes in 
an electorate of more than one million in the State of 
California at the presidential election of 191 6 would have 
put a Republican instead of a Democrat in the White 
House during these momentous years; and a change of 

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some eight hundred votes in not more than nine con- 
gressional districts at the same election, would have 
enabled the Republicans to organize the House of Repre- 
sentati\es and to elect the Speaker. 

Despite these facts, the President of the United States, 
in his capacity as a party leader, was rash enough in 
October last to demand of the American people a vote of 
confidence in his administration. He drew a dismal pic- 
ture of what would happen to him and his influence if 
his demand were refused. In reply, the Administration 
recei\'ed a vote of lack of confidence, which, all things 
considered, is more emphatic than any similar vote since 
the Republican Party lost control of the House of Repre- 
sentatives in 1874, immediately after having re-elected 
General Grant to the Presidency by an overwhelming 
majority in 1872. 

It must not be forgotten, moreover, that when the 
elections of 191 8 were held, the Democrat Administra- 
tion had all the benefit of participation in a successful war; 
that it had been disbursing public moneys by the billion, 
with an extravagant recklessness that was without par- 
allel in the history of any government; that it controlled, 
through the railways, the telegraphs and telephones, as 
well as through the supervision of the banking and busi- 
ness interests of the country, an amount of patronage 
which made the list of office-holders of ten years ago sink 
into insignificance. Despite all these sources of political 
aid and strength, a Republican minority in the House of 
Representatives was turned into a majority of forty-four. 
Passaic County, a veritable capital of American industry, 
spoke with no uncertain sound; so did Maine; so did 
West Virginia; so did Indiana; so did Missouri; so did 
Kansas; and so did Washington. Indeed, in some of the 
western States that were carried for Democrat electors 
in 1 91 6, it would have been only courteous on the part of 
the Democrat Organizations to move to make the vote 

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for the Republican candidates unanimous. Tlie hand- 
writing is on the wall. The next President of the United 
States will be a Republican, and he will have behind him 
a united Republican Party, eager to solve the new ques- 
tions in a spirit of justice and of human sympathy, and 
determined to protect the foundations of the American 
republic against all enemies, whether they be the Central 
Powers and their allies without, or the Anarchists, Bol- 
shevists, and enemies of liberty and social order within. 

THE DEMAND FOR LEADERSHIP 

The American people are tired of politics given over to 
rhetoric and to phrase-making, to carrying water on both 
shoulders, to stooping with ear to the ground and trying 
to avoid taking a definite and specific position on the 
issues raised by the revolutionists who are busy among 
us. The American people, and particularly the young 
Americans, both men and women, where women are 
already exercising the suffrage, are crying out for leader- 
ship, for courage, for vision and for capacity to lead the 
thought of the nation, as well as to formulate its public 
action. Plain speaking and not fine words are what the 
people demand; definite policies and not platitudes are 
what they wish to have presented for their judgment. 

Just see what the situation now is: The war has been 
triumphantly won by the courage, the endurance and 
the high purpose of the people and the armies of France, 
of Great Britain, of Belgium, and of Italy, with the 
powerful aid of the financial and economic resources, and 
of the splendid fighting forces of the United States. The 
decisive part played in the final stage of the war by the 
fighting forces of America on land and on sea, was directly 
due to the resourcefulness, the capacity, the intelligence 
and the patriotism of the American people, and was, in 
spite of the short-comings, the extravagance, the quarrels, 
and the incapacity of many of those who were in con- 

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spicuous posts of official power and responsibility. The 
war is won, and as a result, the people of the United States 
are bound to the splendid peoples who have been their 
allies by new ties of respect and affection, which no selfish 
interests and no enemy propaganda must ever be allowed 
to weaken, much less to break. The result of the war is 
a new world — new in many of its interests; new in many 
of its problems; new in many of its opportunities. What 
is to be the place of America in this new world, and how 
shall the Republican Party do its full duty to the country 
which it was bom to protect and to serv^e? 

THE PEACE SETTLEMENT 

The answer is, after all, comparatively simple. America 
is ready to take her just place as a member of a society of 
like-minded and cooperating nations, to all of which she 
is bound, not only by the ties knit by the events of the 
war, but by strong personal and family bonds growing 
out of the fact that our twentieth century population has 
been drawn from nearly every country in the world. The 
position of America should be that of brother and friend, 
not that of guardian or attempted ruler. We shall have 
quite enough to do in minding our own business and in 
taking care of the interests of our own immense popula- 
tion, and our own complex system of trade and of indus- 
try, without assuming any part of the duty of minding 
other peoples' business. 

The Republican Party is certain to insist that the new 
organization of the world shall be a society of nations, 
and not a society without nations. It will strive constantly 
to strengthen and to protect the integrity and the freedom 
of action of America in order that America, tied down by 
no vain and empty formulas, may have more to give in 
service to other peoples and in cooperation with them. 
The Republican Party will insist that the fruits of the 
war be not lost or traded away; that insidious German 

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propaganda be not listened to; and that the manifest 
attempts to create discord between America on the one 
hand, and France, Great Britain, and Italy, as well as 
with the new nations of the Czechoslovaks and the Poles, 
on the other, shall not be permitted to succeed. We do 
not propose that a war which has been won by arms shall 
be lost by words. We do not propose that the sufferings 
and sorrows of France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, and 
Serbia, or those of tens of thousands of our own American 
families, shall be left without the full results of victory in 
establishing and maintaining peace and good order in the 
world. 

There is grave disappointment among Republicans that 
the American delegation to the Peace Conference was not 
made more representative of the international knowledge, 
the international experience, and the international states- 
manship of our country. There is grave disappointment, 
too, that the terms of peace with the Central Powers were 
not quickly and speedily arrived at, announced and en- 
forced, as they might easily have been, in accordance with 
the convincing formula uttered by the statesmen of France 
early in the war, namely: Reparation, Restitution, Secur- 
ity. Had this course been pursued, the Central Powers 
and their allies would have known by this time exactly 
where they stood, and the splendid unity and concord of 
the Allies, as these existed on November ii last, would 
have been preserved without the present discussion of 
the myriad details of a new-world order, that are quite 
irrelevant to the making of peace, and as to which suf- 
ficient time for a complete understanding and agreement 
should and can be had. The great need of this moment 
is to establish peace, not only in form but in fact; to 
enable business, industry, and agriculture to resume their 
normal course; to restore the broken lines of trade and 
commerce, both at home and abroad; to give men and 
women assurance in their employment and in the conduct 

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of their business; and then, with normal hfe resumed, to 
take up during as many months as may be needed, the 
study of questions of world organization. It is my belief 
this is and has been the substantially unanimous view of 
the most competent and experienced statesmen in e\'cry 
one of the Allied countries, and in the United States; but 
a contrary course has been followed and its results are 
already seen to be unhappy. We are wholly in the dark 
as to what is really being said and done in Paris. The ful- 
some adulation and flattery of the newspaper dispatches, 
so repugnant to right-thinking Americans, reveal little 
and conceal much. These dispatches contradict each 
other, not only on successive days, but on the same day, 
and no one in America, despite the loud protestations of 
open diplomacy, has any clear or accurate idea of what the 
American delegation is pressing upon the Peace Conference 
or how it is being received. What we do know is that 
while peace waits, the splendid unity and spirit of the 
Allies are being destroyed by irrelevant and largely myster- 
ious debates. 

THE DUTY OF SPEAKING PLAINLY 

The spokesmen of the Republican Party, both in and 
out of Congress, have met this deplorable and unhappy 
situation with high patriotism, and with almost super- 
human patience. They have held that since our country 
is engaged in a great international discussion, we must do 
e\'erything in our power to support our of^cial representa- 
tives, even though we do not know what they are doing, 
but suspect they are doing many things which we can- 
not approve. An occasional speech has been delivered on 
the floor of the Senate or the House by way of warning 
to the people that sooner or later the spokesmen of the 
Republican Party will deem it their duty to speak out and 
to tell the truth as they see it. We cannot, however, afford 
to shirk our responsibility for the protection and defense 



of American independence and American institutions, and 
we must not, through silence, allow sinister influences that 
are antagonistic to American principles, and that will in 
time alter or overthrow our Government, to enter un- 
challenged into our life. 

Two events have taken place in quick succession, which 
call for frank and clear speech. Just as the autocratic and 
criminal government of the Bolsheviks in Russia seemed 
to be tottering to its fall, its leaders, with their hands 
still dripping with the blood of their victims, were actually 
invited to confer with representatives of free and liberty- 
loving peoples. This step is in effect that "entering into a 
compact with crime" which the French Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, M. Pichon, only a few weeks ago said should not 
be done. From a moral as well as from a political point of 
view, this action, no matter what its excuse, deserves only 
most vigorous denunciation. If, as has been suggested, it 
is the price paid for relieving from a dangerous position 
the tiny military forces landed on the north coast of Rus- 
sia, then it deserves something worse ; for neither Ameri- 
can nor British soldiers would ever ask for compromise 
with criminals as a substitute for their own courage and 
their own noble patriotism. 

The worst criminals produced by the war are the Rus- 
sian Bolsheviks. Even the horrors perpetrated by the 
Austrians in Serbia, and the outrages committed by the Ger- 
mans in Belgium, seem mere exhibitions of temper when 
compared with the systematic cruelty and crime practised 
by the Bolshevik regime against everything in Russia that 
represented law, order and liberty, or that was capable of 
building upon the ruins left by the overthrow of the 
Romanoff dynasty. To desert the people of Russia now 
is an act of astounding folly and ingratitude. To strain at 
gnats like Huerta and William of Hohenzollern, and to 
swallow camels like Lenine and Trotsky, is certainly a 
curious proceeding. If one were seeking for ways to aid 

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our enemies to re-establish their strength and their 
menace, his first step would be to leave the Russian people 
to their tender mercies. 

Formal conference with the Bolsheviks was bad enough, 
and we may well contrast with this action the message 
which the stout-hearted and fearless Mayor of Seattle 
sent a few days ago to American Bolsheviks who were 
organizing war on the peace and order of that splendid 
city. His upholding of law and order is the short and 
easy way to deal with Bolsheviks. But once a conference 
had been determined upon, surely there could have been 
found among the hundred millions of Americans some 
man or woman of honor, of untarnished reputation, and 
with a record for public service who could have borne the 
credentials of the Government of the United States with- 
out soiling or discrediting them. The appointment 
actually made has affronted our decent citizenship and 
aggrieved the moral and religious sentiment of the coun- 
try. No one, however blinded by partisanship, has been 
found to rise in defense of this act. It is truly an 
astonishing performance. 

We saw one journalistic adulator sent, without ofifiicial 
commission but with high authority, to muddle our 
affairs with Mexico, and we saw him later turn up among 
the most active friends and agents of our Teuton enemies. 
We were told in explanation that, although without pre- 
vious training or public experience, he had received this 
important commission as a reward for having written in 
flattering terms of the President and his policies. It 
appears that this new appointee also has busied himself 
with his pen, and that apparently just because he has 
published a crude and fulsome eulogy of the President's 
personality and jjul^lic conduct, he has been selected to 
represent the people of the United States. Not a fraction 
of one per cent, of those who know his record would be 
willing to take his hand, and yet he is to represent America 



at a conference on the vitally important question of the 
future of the Russian people and their relation to the 
rest of the world. 

We have become accustomed during these past six years 
to the President's fondness for surrounding himself with 
intellectual and political midgets, but we have hitherto 
been spared anything so shocking as this appointment. 
What are the clergy going to say about it? What are the 
women of the country, now granted the vote in many 
states, going to say about it? What are high-minded 
patriots and jealous lovers of our country's honor, regard- 
less of section or of party, going to say about it? I for 
one do not believe that true patriotism and decent feeling 
are dead in the land. 

PROBLEMS AT HOME 

While our eyes are turned to the Peace Conference and 
our minds are filled with international problems, we are 
drifting at home, without executive or legislative leader- 
ship, in waters filled with rocks and floating mines. These 
rocks and floating mines are the domestic problems which 
become every day more insistent, and whose solution we 
must not postpone one instant longer than is absolutely 
necessary. What is needed is more action and less talk. 
The Constitution of the United States, by far the most 
important single political document of modern times, was 
completely drafted between May 25 and September 17. 
There is no reason, save mental and political laziness and 
inertia, for dragging out over five years a solution of the 
railway problem, or for allowing the industrial situation to 
continue to develop domestic wars which are already 
disastrous, and might easily become comparable in their 
effects with the international war through which we have 
just passed. 

In order to deal with these problems in an American 
spirit and in the interest of all America, we must get 

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back cjuickly to our American form of government. 
Under pressure of the necessities of war we turned our 
Government, for the time being, into an autocracy and a 
bureaucracy which Russia of the Tsars might well have 
cn\icd. There was manifold interference with individual 
liberty, with civil rights, with trade and commerce, 
and with all other normal activities of a free people. 
Congress became a rubber stamp, and public discus- 
sion of public policies practically disappeared. As war 
measures, all these were defensible. We had to help to 
win the war, to win it quickly, and to win it completely. 
This has been done and we have now to return our 
Government to its proper functions and to restore freedom 
to the individual and to business. 

Of course, there are those who believe in transforming 
our American republic into a socialistic democracy, and 
they would be glad to continue permanently the autocratic 
and bureaucratic system which the war developed ; and it 
must not be forgotten that socialism is the twin brother of 
autocracy, and that like autocracy it is the deadly enemy 
of republicanism and of individual liberty. 

The people are now everywhere asking questions of 
business and of the relation of government to business; 
questions of finance and of financial provision for an ex- 
panding foreign trade ; questions of labor and of the work- 
ingman's ambition to have his full share of the rewards 
and the satisfactions of American life ; questions of agri- 
cultural development and of the utilization of the nation's 
resources; and, above all, questions of the administration 
and control of the nation's great systems of transportation 
and communication. All these cry aloud for answer and 
the Democrat administration has no answer to give. So 
long as these questions are unanswered, and so long as 
there is wide-spread anxiety and uncertainty as to future 
policies, just so long we offer invitation to the activities of 
those desperate revolutionaries who would destroy liberty 

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and order to set up a new tyranny of the mob, who would 
overthrow equality of citizenship in order to establish a 
privileged ruling class, and who would declare war on 
American institutions in the name of that mad and 
murderous Bolshevism which is just now reducing the 
people of Russia to impotence and slavery. The way of 
escape from all this is to press forward quickly to the solu- 
tion of our domestic problems with wisdom, with human 
sympathy, with courage, and with constructive p6wer. 

THE LABOR PROBLEM 

The greatest and most far-reaching of these problems 
is that of labor. Here very great progress had been made 
until the I.W. W. movement and Bolshevism appeared 
in America. The hours of work in essential industries 
were no longer excessive and were being steadily short- 
ened ; wages had risen greatly, both in money value and in 
purchasing power; conditions attaching to hand work 
had been improved in healthfulness and in attractiveness ; 
collective bargaining was well established over an increas- 
ing area, both of territory and of industry. The path of 
progress lies not in returning to a state of industrial war, 
but rather in applying to industrial conflicts precisely the 
same principles of justice, of understanding and of sym- 
pathy, by which we hope hereafter to avoid international 
conflicts. 

The labor problem, so-called, is not, I think, primarily a 
question of wages or of hours of work; it is primarily a 
human problem. Just so soon as we recognize that wages 
are paid, not out of savings, or capital, but out of products, 
and that the greater the product the more there will be 
available for wages, we shall have begun to get on the 
right track. The next step is to realize that product is 
the result of cooperation, not of Capital and Labor, con- 
sidered as dead, abstract things whose names are spelled 
with large letters, but of the cooperation of three elements, 

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all of which are human: the man who works with his 
hands, the man who works with his head, and the man 
who works with his savings. In each case the essential 
thing is not the hands, the head, or the savings; the 
essential thing is the man. 

Let us establish cooperation and conference between 
these three types of producers, not alone when difficulties 
and disputes have arisen or are about to arise, but as a 
steady policy in the daily conduct of the particular busi- 
ness. By taking counsel together as a means of prevention, 
these three types of men will come, after a while, to need 
very little counsel together as a means of cure. Action 
such as this is sometimes called industrial democracy. 
That is not a very happy or a very exact term, but if it 
assists in making clear what I have in mind then I am 
willing to use it. If we can deal satisfactorily with the labor 
question, the next few years will be years of the greatest 
prosperity in the industrial history of the American people. 

THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM 

The reason why the Government was obliged to take 
o\'er and to operate the railways of the country as a war 
measure was because our uncertain and unwise policies 
of the last thirty years had put the railways in a position 
where they could not themselves cooperate as the Govern- 
ment wished without violating the law. The first thing 
that the Government railway administration did was to 
set all restrictive laws aside and to operate the railways 
with a view to meeting the necessities of the moment. This 
fact alone conclusively demonstrates to every thoughtful 
man the unwisdom of our policy or policies toward the 
railways during the past generation. We had injured or 
ruined their credit so that they could not get money for 
additional terminals, for needed rolling stock, or for 
impro\x'ments that were imperatively demanded. We had 
prevented them from combining to divide the business of 

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a given territory to the best advantage, and we had put 
them under forty-nine different sets of masters — namely, 
an Interstate Commerce Commission and forty-eight 
separate state commissions or systems of railway control. 
It is important to remember that we ourselves had done 
these things and not the railways. There had been very 
grave abuses In the organization and conduct of the 
railway systems years ago, and just resentment at these 
abuses had played a large part in bringing about the 
situation which existed In 19 17. Perhaps now we have 
learned our lesson and are ready to deal with the transpor- 
tation systems of the country as an important national 
asset to be preserved and developed for national service. 
There is no good reason why we should take either five 
years or two years to work out and adopt a sound policy 
toward the railways. 

The ruling principles are simple, and may perhaps be 
stated In this way: 

1. Government ownership and operation of railways have 
been ineffective and unfortunate in Europe, and while com- 
patible with an autocratic or a socialistic state are incom- 
patible with a republic unless that republic is to drift either 
toward autocracy or toward socialistic democracy. To estab- 
lish government ownership and operation of railways would be 
to take a long step toward changing our American form of 
government. 

2. Private ownership and operation of railways, despite 
abuses, particularly in the early days, have contributed enor- 
mously to the development of the United States. They have 
offered unexampled opportunities for initiative and organiz- 
ing skill. They had developed a transportation system which 
was without an equal in the world for cheapness, comfort, 
speed, and public service. 

3. Under government ownership and operation of railways 
all officials and employees of the railway systems would 
become part of a great ruling bureaucracy. They would lose 
their sense of initiative and independence, and they as well as 

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passengers and shippers would be deprived of any disinterested 
government tribunal to which to appeal for redress of griev- 
ances. 

4. The experience of government railway administration 
during the war has clearly demonstrated the futility of attempting 
to continue to apply the provisions of the Sherman Act to 
transportation systems: combination, cooperation, and the 
pooling of business are an absolute necessity if the railways are 
to continue to serve the public successfully. Such combination, 
cooperation, and pooling can, however, only be permitted under 
government supervision and control. 

5. While private ownership and operation of railways are 
not only advantageous but probably necessary to the continu- 
ance of the American system of government, the railways 
themselves are not private undertakings. They are charged 
w^ith a public interest and are distinctly public service institu- 
tions. For this additional reason, and because of experience in 
this and other countries, government supervision and control 
are essential. 

6. Government supervision and control of railways involve 
large powers over capital issues, service, rates and wages. 
This means absolute ruin for the railway systems unless with 
the supervision and control there goes a just measure of finan- 
cial responsibility. In other words, the government must 
cooperate with the railways in making it possible for them to 
serve the public as the government may either desire or compel. 
One way to do this is to establish rates at a point which will 
produce a return sufficient to pay interest on bonded debt and 
dividends of a fixed minimum amount upon capital stock, 
providing that earnings in excess of the amount necessary for 
these purposes shall be applied in equal parts to reward labor, 
to efTect improvements in permanent way and rolling stock, 
and finally to reward investors. 

7. Create a Federal Transportation Board to take the place 
of the Interstate Commerce Commission with supervision of 
all transportation whether by land or by water, and provide 
that membership in the federal transportation system shall 
carry with it such advantages that no existing railway, and 
none hereafter organized, could afford to remain outside of it. 

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Pursue in this respect a policy similar to that which has been 
successful in building up the Federal Reserve banking system. 

8. Remove railways that are members of the federal trans- 
portation system from the iuris4iction or control of state com- 
missions, while providing that local and regional interest in 
and concern for railway systems be fully recognized. Treat 
all transportation in law, as it is in fact, as part of one great 
system of national transportation, regardless of whether a par- 
ticular shipment crosses a state line or not. The Republican Na- 
tional Convention of 1916 emphatically supported this policy. 

9. Settlement of the relation to exist between the railways 
and the government is not a matter for railway managers, 
owners of securities and government officials alone. It is a 
matter which interests every citizen not only as a potential 
passenger or shipper, but as an American concerned in the 
protection of those fundamental principles upon which the 
country's liberty, opportunity, and prosperity have been built. 

Given these principles, it should not be difficult for a 
disinterested body of men to prepare in a short time a bill 
for the exclusive federal supervision of the railway systems 
of the country. Were it announced that this was to be 
done, the wheels of industry would begin to revolve 
and trade to expand without an hour's delay. 

THE BUSINESS PROBLEM 

The relation of the Federal Government to the coun- 
try's business ought to be settled upon the basis of the 
experience of the last thirty years, and by the application 
of principles similar to those that have been suggested for 
the treatment of the transportation problem. The attempt 
to enforce competition by law and to punish cooperation 
has been a dismal failure, and it was dropped by the 
Government the moment we entered the war. A con- 
structive policy toward business will provide for the 
largest amount of initiative and cooperation on the part 
of individuals and corporations, while assuring the same 
measure of effective federal supervision and control that 

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now exists in the case of the banks, and that ought to exist 
in the case of the railways. We need by the side of the 
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Transportation 
Board, a Federal Trade Board with analogous powers and 
duties in relation to the producing, manufacturing, and 
shipping industries of the country. 

To be sure, these problems are vast and touch directly 
the life and interest of every American, and for that reason 
they are problems which Americans must solve for 
themselves. How better can they set out to soke them 
than in the patient, long-suffering, and deeply-patriotic 
spirit of Abraham Lincoln? He was bom no years ago 
into a world which men then thought as troubled and as 
difficult as we now think ours. The menace of Napoleon 
hung over Europe and the people of Great Britain had 
undertaken, with all their resourcefulness, their energy and 
their determination, the task of his overthrow in order that 
the newly-established liberties of the people might not be 
limited or lost. While Lincoln was yet a child on the 
frontier in Southern Indiana, Napoleon was a prisoner at 
St. Helena and was no more to trouble Europe or the 
world. Then, as now, American questions went hand in 
hand with international questions, and as Lincoln grew up 
his mind was turned toward matters of domestic govern- 
ment, of the settlement and organization of new terri- 
tories, of human freedom and human slavery, and finally 
of the preservation of the Union itself. No man can tell 
what might have happened to America had Abraham 
Lincoln not been elected to the Presidency in i860, but 
of one thing we may be sure: The history of the world 
from that day to this would have been strangely different. 
With that wonderful combination of qualities of heart and 
head which enabled him to carry the country safely 
ihrcnigh the crisis of four years of civil war, and which 
then placed him in the Pantheon of the world's noblest 

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heroes and servants, he made possible the America which 
we know and love, the America of almost unlimited power, 
of lofty purpose, and of stem determination not to let 
Liberty wither or die in Its hands. The question to be 
settled by the people In i860 was whether the Union 
should be preserved or permitted to dissolve. Abraham 
Lincoln said that it should be preserved at all costs, and 
that under no circumstances should It be permitted to 
dissolve. The question to be settled by the people in 
1920 will be whether the American nation shall remain 
upon its foundation of ordered liberty and free oppor- 
tunity, or whether it shall be so modified, or perhaps even 
so largely overturned, that there will arise In its stead a 
social democracy, autocracy's nearest and best friend, to 
take over the management of each Individual's life and 
business, to order his comings and his goings, to limit his 
occupations and his savings, and to say that the great 
experiment of Washington and Hamilton, of Jefferson and 
Madison, of Marshall and Webster, of Adams and Clay, 
and of Lincoln and Roosevelt has come to an end, and 
gone to join the list of failures in free government with 
the ancient republics of Greece and Rome and their later 
followers of Venice and Genoa. 

Lincoln quoted Scripture to his purpose when he said 
at Springfield In 1858: " 'A house divided against itself 
cannot stand'. I believe this Government cannot endure 
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the 
Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall 
— but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will 
become all one thing, or all the other." 

We may almost echo his exact words, and say that a 
house divided against itself cannot stand, a nation cannot 
endure half American and half Bolshevik. I do not 
expect the nation to continue divided, but I do expect 
that under the leadership and guidance of the Republican 
Party it will become all American. 

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